In 1906, the Carnegie unit, or credit hour, was introduced to standardize U.S. public education. It defined the precise number of minutes students needed to learn a particular subject and the number of credit hours required to earn a high school or college degree. At the dawn of the 20th century, the Carnegie unit served the important purpose of…

Schools today face the challenge of preparing students to live, work, and prosper in a rapidly changing world. As a response to this global challenge, Norway has adopted a national curriculum focusing on the development of 21st-century skills. In this study, we investigate if and how the tasks in science and language arts textbooks in…

Purpose: This study was conducted to reveal the views of academicians, working in the Faculty of Education, on the 2023 Vision Document of the Ministry of National Education. Method: Qualitative research method was used in this study. The study group consisted of six faculty members. In the determination of participants, easily accessible…

Education policy ambitions or presumptions in most countries are being accused of turning schools into social factories to supply humanpower to produce commodities. This is apparent bureaucratic education policy imposition on school-actors which promotes class division and conflict in sharing resources. Using the Marxist-critical-lenses, this…

Seamless and future-oriented: in essence, this is Finland's vision for lifelong learning in a world where adapting to new jobs and tasks and trends in society is becoming the norm. To make it a reality requires the support of the entire education and training system. This renewed emphasis on learning as a continuous process throughout life and the…

The purpose of this study was to examine how competency-based learning (CBL) is defined across states in the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands region and gain insight into barriers and facilitators to implementation of this reform. Many states in the region have started to consider and implement competency-based learning as a…

Early in the twentieth century, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie established the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to create a pension system for the nation's college professors. The introduction of this pension system proved an ingenious educational reform. At the time, American higher education was a largely ill-defined…

Many countries are at varying stages of implementing competency-based education into their schools to equip youth with skills necessary to adapt to a changing world. Very little is known regarding practical approaches to incorporate competencies into school curriculum. This study examines five schools in Auckland, New Zealand from a variety of…

A full year of progress in advancing education reform across America is documented in each of the Foundation for Excellence in Education's Annual Reports. The illustrated pages of the 2014 report, provide data-rich updates on Excellence in Education's work to advance student-centered policies in more than 40 states, all aimed at improving learning…

Our main concern was to investigate the implementation of the new "Education Act", giving adults the statutory right to complete upper secondary education. Referring to a "top-down" and a "bottom-up" perspective we have investigated how the representatives of the county authorities (the bureaucrats) interpret and…

This article describes the response to recommendations made by the National Association of Secondary School Principals' Consortium for the Performance Based Preparation of Principals regarding improvements in administrator education programs. Efforts to adopt the recommendations at universities in California, Utah, Illinois, and Michigan are…

Provides 10 guidelines to follow in implementing a competency-based curriculum. The guidelines include not imposing the program from above, matching measurement devices to instructional goals, stimulating student support of the program, and allowing for easy adjustment of competency measures. (IRT)

The potential of minimum competency testing cannot be realized unless school districts engage in the complex processes of competency-based program development. (Author/MLF)

Conventional secretarial courses typically use competency-based approaches. The author argues that these approaches are not appropriate for providing higher-level secretarial students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for new employment roles. The purpose of secretarial education is discussed, as well as the need for management…

Describes Baltimore Learning Communities, a school reform project that includes a competency-based model based on the competencies identified by the Labor Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). (JOW)